Adoi! Much ado again about English v Malay

 

Here we go with yet another round of polemics on the – voluntary or perhaps now enforced – use of the Malay language in Malaysia.

The government is threatening, or maybe even already implementing, sanctions and punishments for those within the public sector who don’t toe the line.

A state minister from Sarawak has come out to say this is a stupid move, and presumably the state government of Sarawak won’t be joining in on the fun.

It would be interesting to see a Sarawak civil servant speaking with his federal counterpart – but through a translator!

A retired federal minister has also come out with some choice words on the matter, as only she can. So, it seems like I’m in good company, even if it’s that of politicians! Well, desperate times call for desperate people to band together, so what to do.

I’ve argued before about the need to be good in English. It’s one of the most important business tools in the world today; wilfully neglecting it is akin to entering a race with a car that can only go in reverse.

The new focus on Malay will obviously mean English will be neglected, if not actually sidelined. Those too lazy, or too intimidated, to master English will now have an official excuse. Soon private security guards at government departments will start shouting at anybody who utters even a single word of English there. You’ve been warned.

In defence of national honour

The stated reason for such a move is to raise the dignity or esteem (or martabat) – of the Malay language, and by extension that of the Malays themselves, by having it used as the sole official language in Malaysia, the region and one day, Indonesia permitting, the world.

That is rubbish. Dignity has to be earned through merit and excellence, and not by a decree or a resolution by political hacks. The world isn’t impressed by a syiok-sendiri self-declared success. It’ll just continue to march on without us.

Many countries that we are friendly with, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, afford official or semi-official status to English.

Pakistan’s Nobel Prize Winner in physics, Abdus Salam, certainly didn’t win it by publishing scientific papers in Urdu.

When kampung heroes step up

Unfortunately, all politics nowadays is kampung politics. The kampung politicians started out by giving their cousins catering contracts for refreshments at the local political party AGM.

A few more elections later, including, though not necessarily so, federal ones, they’re ministers, still semi-literate but running around in fancy Alphards because they can’t really show off their million-ringgit cars.

But their mindset is still about which cousin, or friend, or flunky or crony, to offer this or that contract but now the contracts are worth millions, or even billions. And their focus is still especially about what victory to claim, and what gift to bring back, to the folks back in the kampungs.

The real tasks of governing and leading is just too hard and too scary. Why risk hearing the pesky middle-class laugh at your incompetence? Best to lay low, pick an easy topic and pummel it to death. Hence the fight to kill, or at least maim, English so Malay can “win”.

Changing the subject

We can’t pummel much of anything out of Malaysia now: Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam and others have moved way above our weight class. Don’t even think about Singapore: if they are not tied to Malaysia by the Causeway, they’d probably have upped anchor and sailed away.

So, where these politicians can win is by playing the easy game of claiming victory as race heroes to the kampung masses, whose needs are generally quite basic and can be met by the occasional ang pow during election time.

This is a game of deflection and diversion by people who dare not face the real world because it is too scary and competitive, but can declare victory in front of kampung folks as having finally brought esteem and respect to “our people”.

The middle-class and others will just ignore this and focus on getting their kids the best education possible at whatever cost. But the middle-class in Malaysia is shrinking; they don’t breed like rabbits, and won’t vote for anybody they wouldn’t at least hire as an assistant admin manager in their company, so who cares about them?

We need translators

I wonder how to produce the thousands of translators now needed to help our civil servants in their work, especially when going overseas (or even just to Sarawak).

Our universities certainly can produce a few thousand PhD-qualified translators, but that will take at least, oh, three months.

I humbly offer a solution: given their amazing skills to pick up languages and their work ethic, we should bring in more Bangladeshi workers as translators! Quickly sign an MoU with them, in Malay, as it is already one of the most widely spoken languages there anyway.

Let me be more positive and supportive though, and try to help everybody understand Malay better, as it’ll be such a major factor in our life going forward.

Learn a phrase a day

I’ll introduce a few Malay proverbs to start with:

Katak Bawah Tempurung – frog under a coconut shell.
The said frog feels the tempurung is its entire universe, and hence feels it is the master of the universe. Any similarities with actual kataks, the jumping kinds found in Parliament, is purely accidental.

Jaguh Kampung – village heroes
These are the kind who would only venture outside if absolutely necessary; when outside, they look a picture of timidity, for whom the joy and relief of returning home must be shared with thousands at the airport.

Kaum – the root of the word perkauman, or communalism.
It is now the dominant driving force of our politics, and the fixation with the Malay language is a symptom of fear and timidity of many, and hence the desire to shrink our existence to something smaller, cosier and less scary.

Kayangan – loosely meaning paradise, or heaven.
It refers to the elites of our feudal world who live in their own hedonistic existence of wealth and luxury, throwing each other (and their children) titles and positions and wealth, not enjoyed by those of us not in it (the rakyat marhaen – explanation below).

Khayal – drugged or zoned out
Those who live in their own world, inventing their own reality and starring in their own reality show (q.v. katak bawah tempurung, q.v. kayangan, q.v. jaguh kampung). It’s the state of being high, or perhaps of being in a stupor, that many find themselves in when they’re addicted to easy power and wealth.

Let me now take you to the next step, of stringing some of these “k” words together to form something meaningful in Malay. Try this simple one: Kaum Kayangan Khayal.

This KKK, Malaysia’s own version of the toxic Ku Klux Klan of the American South, pretty much sums up the state of our nation’s meandering, drifting, reversing and increasingly mean and unjust journey.

Next week, continuing with “k” words: Kayu – a reference to dense wood, presumably a sign of cluelessness, and how that so reminds us of some of the people we share this lovely country with. - FMT

A page from a Malay-English dictionary in the collection of author Anthony Burgess, who was a colonial education officer with MCKK and the teachers’ training college in Kota Bharu in the 1950s. (Burgess Foundation pic)

 

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.